


Provisional Means

by bbcsherlockian



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Changing Tenses, M/M, POV Sherlock Holmes, TW: Self Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 21:03:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1137365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbcsherlockian/pseuds/bbcsherlockian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It burns and it's glorious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Provisional Means

“Do not rely on the highs, Sherlock. The rushes. Never trust them.” His brother had told him what now seemed like so, so many years ago. “A temporary surge from adrenaline is ephemeral and you cannot rely on yourself to make any sort of decision under the influence of it. Drugs, violence, love. Pain. They all produce chemical reactions which alter you momentarily. It’s temporal, deciduous, insubstantial. It will destroy you - and yes - despite what you protest, you are an addict. Do not become reliant on those brief surges of impalpable nihility.”

Mycroft was correct, of course. And yet.

 _(John had walked into the living room and placed a pleasantly warm veering on uncomfortably hot mug of_ something _\- tea, he presumed, as a result of John’s almost obsessive regularity - into his outstretched palm.)_

Sherlock hears the door below him slam; the confused anger radiating from John in copious waves is muted even now, and shall soon become invisible, imperceptible, irrelevant. A nerve twitches his hand and he can almost taste it, the inevitability and closeness. Soon, he tells himself.

_(Sherlock had caught his wrist with his index finger and thumb, caught his gaze with steely blue. John had caught something else entirely, something that now resided in the centre of his chest, slightly to the left.)_

He rolls up a shirt sleeve to reveal an arm wrapped in alabaster skin that once had the potentiality to be elegant. Now, however-- The surface is no longer smooth but pockmarked and discoloured in places, minute scars indicating a loss of sensitivity: In flesh and in mind. A cigarette is already balanced in his left hand which is somehow allowing tremors that he thought he had hidden perfectly from himself to hurry to the surface - he is unlike John in this respect.

_(Sherlock had placed the mug down carefully - with perhaps over-caution as the tips of his fingers had just begun to tremble - before rising to meet the mouth belonging to someone so understatedly refined and continuously overlooked. (With Sherlock Holmes, there was never any oversight.))_

He watches his fingers shake and imagines he can see the blood being forced around his body - his. his transport, yes - by the one organ he so foolishly demonstrated his possession of, not twenty minutes ago. A defect. It has and will always be a defect but now, in this entirely conscious and rational moment, he can’t will his mind to perceive any aspect other than the complete--

_(They were mingling and falling and soaring and breathing each other and suffocating all in the same enduring and ageless moment.)_

The complete rush.

_(The dopamine and adrenaline and oxytocin had slowly chased away all traces of cortisol and it was perfect, entirely and utterly-- The perfect high.)_

Sherlock looks to the floor where the tea has grown cold now and he realises that all he definitively needed was fire, in the end. He lights the cigarette and moves to bring it to his mouth, to draw in the smoke that will wreak havoc with his lungs and enforce calm in his mind, but-- The taste would cleanse him, yes, cleanse his mouth and his tongue and the taste of John and all the places they touched and caressed so lovingly: It had been almost practised, as if they had been kissing for years in the most intimate of fantastical memories that neither had the capability to access. No, he would allow himself this reminder. For now.

_(And when their lips had parted with a soft noise and a moan of shameless need (which could have erupted from either throat), Sherlock had said as much. He had made comparatives to artificial highs from illegal substances, murmured against John’s lips.)_

Instead, he moves the glowing end to his arm immediately and hovers it imperceptibly close above a perfect, dark circle stood stark against the white of his skin after years of service. He can almost hear Mycroft’s voice in the far, unreachable corners of his skull: “Pain is transient. Do not become reliant upon the burn it gives and the burn it removes. Fight this, fight yourself. Sherlock, please.”

_(John had grown concerned and angry but ultimately humiliated - but his hands never once shook - and he had taken his coat and all of the air from inside the flat with him as he left. There was no longer any physical trace of their-- interaction, but instead the traces of the chemicals it had released still sang through his bloodstream.)_

Pain is transient.

_(He welcomed their lingering.)_

His hand continues to shake and he forgets to inhale as the light slowly, savagely meanders towards his waiting fingers. He could let it burn out against his skin, claim it to be an accident but he needs this. Yes, it is a need-- Not a desire or impulse but a crying, yearning, life-affirming need. Pain is transient.

_(He welcomed the soft delight it brought to his every nerve ending, how the comfort was swiftly burned and blackened with every beat of his heart, every pulse of consciousness and memory.)_

Pain is

_(And oh, how he missed him.)_

Pain

_(The moment John had left the flat, the cavern of his chest had been purged of all life and it beat - yes it still trudged flounderingly and faithfully on - but only to remind, to berate, to witness.)_

As he presses the butt into his skin nothing, _nothing_ matters and everything is inconsequential, collateral damage, unsalvageable rubble. And when the stubs of four, dead cigarettes are littered by his feet - strewn carelessly next to the cold, cold tea - he exhales hard through his nose. To an outsider it would sound ragged and distraught but Sherlock only hears relief. Seeing the burnt flesh-- He made a mistake, an utterance and slip of the tongue that has lost him ultimately everything, but seeing the burnt flesh reminds him he is human. Entitled to make error. Some part of him urges his limbs to move, to remove the evidence and retreat somewhere less vulnerable but he is boneless and content, bereft of reason, disinterested in the consequences. He remains, laid bare for all the world to note just how completely heartless the great Sherlock Holmes has become.

But it is of no matter. John will not be returning tonight.


End file.
